The poem “Rationale”, by Olivia Harvey, is a poem that addresses the inquiry question “Why do we only focus on the tangible or the material in our culture?”. In the poem, Olivia is comparing a success or form of power, as a tangible item, as it can be measured. Throughout the poem, Olivia discusses how we are not just polluting our earth through physical objects, but also by our hurtful opinions and ideas that we expose to society, in turn, killing our world by our social hierarchy. This is also one of the reasons why Olivia expresses the human need to feel power and valued in her poem, as our society’s hierarchy of measuring importance of ideas, is only heard when we feel that the person who is speaking is of enough importance to listen, epically when the person is speaking their ideas, tells the audience that they too will become of the same importance as them, although it is usually not true. Olivia’s poem ties together important ideas that our society is facing through the main idea of our environment and hubris kind of thinking in our society. In Olivia’s poem, she expresses through the video the challenges our world faces, as we live in a first world country, and generally stay to this way of thinking, whereas those who live in a third world country face different difficulties and may not think as this as one of their priorities.

Here is the Video I choose to use to go with my Mini Inquiry English Poem.